Goldberg slams Brookings, via Qatar

5/2/13 10:47 AM EDT

Jeffrey Goldberg has gone to town on the Qatari goverment in a new column for Bloomberg View, which — in addition to likely riling up Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani and other members of the royal family — is almost sure to anger a few folks at the Brookings Institution.

Goldberg's column is an unyielding string of jabs at Qatar, which he dubs "the Hamas-loving, worker-exploiting, party-banning, dissent-stifling, Muslim Brotherhood-funding U.S. ally." But more than a few punches land on Brookings, if only because the venerable Washington-based think tank is standing too close to the fight.

Qatar gives significant financial support to Brookings, and has for years. In 2012, it gave between $2,500,000 and $4,999,999, according to the latest financial report, putting it on a level with the likes of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Brookings also has a center in Doha.

Goldberg's column opens with a Brookings dinner "convened to pay homage to Al Thani" for his support of the organization: "I went to the dinner that night embarrassed on behalf of Brookings, which, like many institutions in Washington, shouldn’t be taking money from despotic Middle Eastern regimes, yet does," Goldberg writes. "And the warm-up acts were indeed cringe-worthy. I can’t write about what was said, because these introductory remarks were summarily declared off the record, but suffice to say that various government officials who should have known better ventilated on the subject of Qatar’s magnificence with more than the minimally required sycophancy."

Goldberg isn't all sour on Brookings. In an email to POLITICO on Thursday afternoon, he wrote, "the saving grace of that evening in the basement of the Willard Hotel was the fact that Martin Indyk" — vice president and director of foreign policy at Brookings — "asked the prime minister straightforward, news-driven questions, the sort of questions that might have gotten a Qatari arrested for asking."

"My complaint is that a (great) think tank devoted to advancing democracy shouldn't give p.r. cover to despots," he later wrote on Twitter.

In my experience, these sort of follow ups — "I criticize you because I love you" — rarely succeed in comforting the offended party. You can be sure there are quite a few folks at Brookings who are none too pleased with Goldberg right now. But for those in the foreign policy community who are as down on Qatar as Goldberg is, it's the column that needed to be written — and they're grateful for it.

UPDATE (1:40 p.m.): Brookings president Strobe Talbott kindly put us in touch with Tamara Wittes, the Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, who responded to Goldberg's criticisms in a conversation with POLITICO:

Jeffrey can and should write whatever he wants to write. But we got a leading foreign official to respond, on the record, to the questions that everyone wanted to ask. It was a substantive event, an exchange that even Jeffrey said he found enlightening, and it demonstrated that we do our work with integrity and independence. I think it was a valid exchange with the prime minister and foreign minister of Qatar; Martin [Indyk] asked the questions in the way they needed to be asked.

Brookings is fortunate to have funders from a variety of sectors. It's clear to the organization and to its funders that we maintain our independence, and our relationship with [Qatar] is not different than our relationship with any other donor.

UPDATE (2:15 p.m.): Goldberg responds to Wittes, via email:

One small point: I admired Martin Indyk's line of questioning (as I wrote), but I would say that it is possible to get leading foreign officials to respond, on the record, to the questions that everyone wants to ask, without taking their money. See, for instance, this.

One other small point: I would prefer that American think tanks I admire, including Brookings, not take money from authoritarian governments that are known to provide material support to groups designated by the U.S. government as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. It just smells bad.